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Do Cultured Veggies Need a Starter?

"You can learn new things at any time in your life if you're willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you."Barbara Sher

Do You Need A Starter Culture To Make Cultured Veggies?

No Cultured Needed — Unless . . .

No, you do not need a starter culture to make cultured veggies. However, by using a starter you will receive more probiotics and a lot of other benefits. Let me explain your options and you can better choose which is the best method for you. I have tried all the methods below and these are the things I have learned in my years of experience and through trial and error, which is a great teacher. I only sell things in my store that I like and use and I will always shoot straight with you about everything that I personally do.

Benefits Of Cultured Veggies

Make these veggies any way you can and you will receive some of these benefits.

Methods For Making Cultured Vegetables

This is, hands down, my favorite culture to make cultured vegetables. It is dairy free, and they specially designed this culture to make good bacteria stay at a higher level for a longer period of time. When you make cultured veggies they're at their strongest after the first few days they are made. This is because the cultures are rapidly consuming the food in the veggies and making probiotics, but as they run out of food they start to diminish. This will happen more quickly when you don't use a culture. At first, I thought this was just a lot of hype, but after using this starter in my veggies for years it convinced me. The veggies stay more active even after months in the fridge. This starter also makes these veggies really strong and powerful; so I caution you to be careful because they will start to clean the world inside of you when you eat them, removing pathogens and candida and you will often feel the effects if you consume too much and aren't used to them.

This is a great resource when you don't have a starter culture, but there are a few things that I want to mention. First of all, if you make milk kefir a lot you will always have access to kefir whey, which is handy. You should always use fresh whey within a few days of making your kefir. Kefir whey that sits a long time, even in your fridge, loses a lot of its probiotics because it is separated from the milk which is its food source. When culturing with kefir whey, it is best to culture in small batches and eat it quickly because it can get a strong taste that I don't like over time. There are a lot of kefir strains of bacteria that will ferment your veggies in different ways, so your veggies will taste different and you will get different bacteria benefits than you would with the bacteria in powdered veggie starter cultures.

This is a fun and easy way to make cultured veggies and great if you are limited on resources. Submerging veggies under water and adding enough salt will cause acidifying bacteria to make their own good bacteria; Lactobacilli. It is naturally designed this way that the veggies make their own good bacteria. Over the course of a few weeks, these probiotics diminish quickly as they run out of food, which is another reason I recommend using a starter culture to keep the probiotics at higher levels longer. Still, this is a good way to have cultured veggies and it is also fun to make and super easy. I would double the salt in all the recipes to ensure that the ph is at the correct level you need to cause the proper fermentation.

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Disclaimer:

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